How do artists interpret personal histories and cultural traditions to create a point of inquiry into current events and contemporary life? How do you create common experiences for all students in a diverse classroom? Is it possible to sail a Spanish galleon made of manila folders to Hog Island? These questions and more will be discussed at an upcoming KQED Arts Education workshop hosted in partnership with Teaching Artists Organized in Oakland.
Educators are invited to join us on January 21 for a day of art, dance and discovery. We'll explore the work of local artists including Ala Ebtekar and Michael Arcega (check out his his manila folder Spanish galleon in the video below).
We'll also develop collaborative lesson plans and learn a few Bhangra dance moves. Bhangra is an Indian folk dance, and many young dance teams are keeping the tradition alive in the Bay Area with the yearly Dhol di Awaz competition.
Read more about this exciting workshop and sign up on the Teaching Artists Organized website. There is a fee but scholarships are available from KQED. Send an email to ArtsEd@KQED.org to learn more.
What's the most creative way you've recycled a discarded object?
Intro
Many artists use recycled materials as their medium. They take the world's detritus and transform it into works of art, giving trash a new name. At San Francisco's Recology Center, artists are offered residencies where they spend a few months in a studio at the dump creating new work out of discarded junk, then display it in a gallery exhibit. Once an artist is selected for the residency, they are bestowed with lifetime "picking rights" at SF Recology, and there is plenty of trash to go around. You'd be surprised to see what turns up in the garbage pile. Many objects even appear unused, and most seem destined for a greater purpose.
Resource
KQED Gallery Crawl segment The Gleaners.
Meet David King and Christine Lee, two of SF Recology's artists in residence who created sculptural art out of San Francisco's trash.
To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDedspace and end it with #KQEDDoNow
For eighth-grader Roberta Stromas, the school playground had been a source of pain and anguish. On several occasions, her peers would not include her while hanging out, playing games or even sharing. This had all been attributed to the color of her skin. Roberta is African American and in the past her friends have had a problem with that.
"Racism really kind of stopped me from accomplishing my goals in life because it made me think about is this person going to judge me because I'm black? Is this person going to make assumptions about me because of the color of my skin? I kind of hide it that it don't affect me, but it's like when I get home it plays over and over in my head of what happened… I try to say to myself they're missing out, but I feel like I'm missing out on a friendship. "
In her film The Skin I'm In, Roberta meditates on her experiences with race in her friendships and how it affects her. She acts differently in front of her family, showing them that she is a happy girl, but inside she is angry and sad. Roberta comments on the strength of those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party and how they have helped build a brighter future. But, racism still exists and at the end of the film, Roberta makes a call for action to end racism entirely.
Here's her film The Skin I'm In, also produced by Brianna Lyon, Zack Ledo, and Da'Shun Frelot.
This video was made in collaboration with KQED and San Francisco Peer Resources as part of Project VoiceScape, a partnership with Adobe Youth Voices, PBS, and POV that is aimed at encouraging middle and high school students nationwide to use digital media tools in creating compelling stories about issues and concerns important to them. At Lick Middle School, the students all picked different themes to explore like depression, immigration, graffiti, video game addiction, domestic violence, and race and discrimination. Students produced incredibly poignant films about social issues that personally affect them. Through this personal lens, these films aim to express issues subjectively and do not attempt to hold any sort of objective journalistic integrity. These films also do not represent the opinions of any of the partnering organizations.
KQED Education also worked with students from Philip and Sala Burton High School. All of the work was done in collaboration with the San Francisco Ed Fund's Peer Resources program. At Burton, the students all picked the theme of college access as a focus for their films. The concept references financial struggles, immigration issues, lack of support, fears and anxieties.
Very little remains private in the digital age. Social media present us all with questions about privacy and safe practices online. In our New Media Literacies curriculum for ESL instructors we address the implications of the new media landscape as it impacts students’ lives, looking at what is known about them through their online social media presence as well as what students can know to be true, important or trivial as they wade through the constant stream of information.
In our first lesson What Does the Public Know About You? --Does it Matter?, one of the questions we ask is: what are the risks of creating an online social presence? To explore this we suggest students work in pairs to conduct an online search of each other (or their instructor) assuming the role of an employer – a social networking company that wants to hire someone who is passionate about social networking. Reviewing examples of what they find – that they are willing to share! – we discuss their overall impression of their partner’s web presence?
For lesson plans, activities and online resources check out KQED Education New Media Literacies web page.
Do Now is a weekly activity for students to respond to current issues through the use KQED's award-winning online media resources and social media tools like Twitter.
